Reinstatement of NHIS boss
The recall of the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, Usman Yusuf, by president Buhari is troubling. Yusuf, appointed to the position in 2016, was suspended by the Minister of Health in July 2017 following allegations of corruption and abuse of office. Specifically, Yusuf was alleged to have misappropriated the sum of N919 million, being part of contributions by subscribers of the scheme.
He was alleged to have diverted a huge part of the money under the pretext of training staff of the scheme, bought a Sport Utility Vehicle for N58 million, approved contracts to the tune of N1 billion naira to cronies and turned the organisation to a family one, populating the place with his relatives. The Senate equally accused him of “corrupt expenditure of N292 million…without recourse to any appropriate approving authority.
Following extant rules, the minister of health suspended Yusuf and set up an administrative panel to investigate him. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and the Independent and Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, also stepped into the matter and are investigating Yusuf. But Yusuf would not go quietly. He kept challenging the authority of the minister to suspend him. Yusuf, responding to the minister’s letter suspending him, said he was “unable to comply” with the directive because, according to him, only the president had the powers to suspend or sack him. But the minister insisted and the suspension was given effect.
Still in a show of defiance, Yusuf refused to appear before the administrative panel investigating him. Regardless, he was found guilty of the panel set up to investigate him and the report of the panel had been submitted to the president since September last year.
However, without taking action on the report of the panel or allowing the EFCC and ICPC conclude their investigation, the president via a letter from his chief of staff to the minister, reinstated Yusuf to his position. His only punishment was that he was “admonished to work harmoniously with the minister.”
This is shocking and unprecedented. But we are not surprised. That was also how government reinstated, promoted and posted Abdulrasheed Maina, former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reform, an alleged criminal and fugitive from the law, to the Ministry of Interior. Despite the many denials by the government, it was confirmed that all senior government officials, beginning from the president, to the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, were all involved in the saga.
This only makes a mockery of the so-much trumpeted war against corruption of the administration. Just like Senator Shehu Sani famously described the Buhari administration, it treats cases of corruption against opposition with insecticide but treats corruption cases against its party members and close associates with deodorant.
This adds to the long list of weighty corruption allegations against close associates and aides of the president that have been swept under the carpet without investigation. We recall the allegations against General Tukur Burutai, Chief of Army Staff, General Abdulrahman Dambazau, Minister of Interior and former Chief of Army Staff, Abba Kyari, and Chief of Staff to the President, Babachir Lawal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). Interestingly also, the Presidential panel set up to probe arms procurement between 2007 and 2015, and whose reports were being used to prosecute past military chiefs was hurriedly disbanded the moment it began moves to investigate the tenure of the Present National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno as Chief of Defence Intelligence between July 2009 and September 2011. The curious reason given by the government for its dissolution was that it has outlived its usefulness. No wonder an analyst recently quipped that “Buhari’s so-called anti-corruption fight is the most invidiously selective, the least transparent, the most brazenly unjust, and the silliest joke in Nigeria’s entire history.”
Worse is the open clannishness and nepotism being displayed by the administration. It gives the impression that the government is not for all Nigerians and that some Nigerians are more favoured and are untouchable no matter the offence they allegedly commit.
Perhaps, by the time the history of this administration is being written, it will go down in history as the most clannish and provincial and did the most to divide the country along ethnic and religious lines.